Hard Drive Prices Soaring

If y'all happen to notice that hard drive prices have skyrocketed (meaning, more than doubled) recently, there's a reason: flooding in Thailand.

Western Digital produces half of the world's hard drives, and half of WD's hard drives are produced in Thailand. WD's Thailand plant currently has about 4 feet of water on the production floor. So, about 25% of the world's hard drive manufacturing capacity just went to hell.

It looks like it's going to be about 4 to 6 months before production returns to anything like normal.

Shit! I've got a big project coming up — one for which I'll need a shitload of 1TB drives.

See how we get spoiled? Five years ago, 1TB drives didn't even exist. Now we bitch if we can't get 'em dirt cheap.

This will be a boon to the other hard drive manufacturers...especially those who don't have operations in Thailand. Hitachi will be affected; their mobile (2.5") drives are made in Thailand. Seagate's main plant is in China, but they manufacture some sub-assemblies in Thailand. It appears that Samsung and Toshiba won't be affected...but with the same demand chasing a diminished supply, prices on all drives have gone up.